Atari scene - past, present and future
Hi to all friends of alternative platforms!
I promised this article to Adok a long time ago, but you know, no time, no motivation, laziness etc. So here you have it; I hope you'll like it a little bit at least.
Let me introduce you - I've been on the Atari since 1993, so I represent the last (really last?) generation of Atari fanatics in the world. I'm a user/coder of nearly all kinds of Atari's. Currently I own an 8 bit 130 XE and 800 XL, and a 16 bit MegaSTE and a 32 bit Falcon 030, but for short time I've had an Atari PC (based on 80286), an Atari Portfolio (do you remember it from Terminator II? :), an Atari Lynx (something like Gameboy color), and an Atari Jaguar (64 bit console like 3DO). Many ppl, even some Amiga sceners, live with the feeling that Atari is totally dead except some nostalgic fanatics/collectors. Not true, ofcoz! Let me describe what it was and what it is like in the Atari world...
Atari XE/XL [8 bit]
Here was always a strange situation in comparison with C64 or ZX. Atari computers were supported by "big" software companies let's say to 1989. Since C64 and ZX were very well supported to 1992-93 (bcoz of their popularity) many ppl thought Atari was dead since 1989. BUT. You know what happened in 1989 - yes, I'm talking about the fall of communism in Eastern Europe (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, ...) and that means opening the boundaries to Western Europe.
To 1989 there wasn't any scene at all, some lame demos, but not any serious groups at all. But after the opening of the boundaries it was possible to import stuff from the West and since in these times computers like Amiga or Atari ST ruled in Western Europe, 8bits were were a very cheap alternative for us (instead of 16 bits - ppl from East can remember horrible sums for IBM XT :) So the era 1989-1995 was the time of forming new, true Atari scene (mainly Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia), even new game market sphere (mainly Poland). Coders got more and more experiences, it was typical to beat the boundaries of the computers by doing "impossible" fx (new graphical modes, more hw sprites, mod music,...) There were also first computer parties (QuaST'92 party in Orneta/Poland, iirc).
In 1996 started the new, so called "Polish" era. In this time most of groups move to Amiga or PC (since hw was cheap in our lands, already) and ppl from C64/ZX and rest of Atari users regarded this as the end of 8 bit Atari. It happened at QuaST'96... Shadows did it... the name of the new scene era is THE ASSKICKER. This demo started it again and in advanced level of perfection. Demos before 1996 were nice, they looked nice, they had nice fx, but they looked like 8 BIT DEMOS (like other 8bits - bobs, plasmas, maybe some vectors etc). Shadows broke this style completely - zoomrotators, cubes with moving/rotating/zooming/shaded textures, wolfenstein 3D, techno track in backround, all fx synced with music, aggressive grafix etc - simply Amiga/PC demo for 8 bit.
After releasing this demo many groups woke up and started to code demos in this style. As I wrote this was a time of Polish coders - maybe some coders from Slovakia and Germany may be competitors, but Polish coders were (and still are) THE BEST. I think the absolute no.1 is a demo Vengeance by Excellent from 1997, if you can, download an emulator and check this one, it's a masterpiece of software (you need only a standard Atari with 128 kB of memory!!!).
Yes, yes, 1996-1999 were the best years of Atari scening... But hey, 1999??? In 1999 the last big demos for a long time were released (shaded torus, freedirectional tunnels, 2-3 fx at the same time, 3D objects with own shadows,...). And then... silence. The last QuaST Party was in 1998 and it wasn't an Atari-only party like before, but it was a fucking commerce multiparty :-( Some Polish sceners meet every summer and winter at "Lato Ludzikow" and "Last Party" every year, but it was maybe 5% of all active sceners before 1999.
Now you probably think that was end of XE/XL scene... I thought it too... but!!! In 2000 year a bunch of C64/ZX dudes came and contacted my friend, -XI-/Satantronic, that they want to make a scene party for all 8bit computers, mainly C64/ZX/Atari. And since XI agreed, now we had 3rd Forever 2e3 party, the biggest 8 bit party in Central Europe. Apart from this fact, in 2001 Quasimodos, in the past very famous group, released a new "big" demo for our Atari, which was probably inspiration for another group, Taquart (one of the best groups in 1996-99), to make another asskicking demo which was released at Lato Ludzikow this summer! (Various ppl coded their contributions for Forever party, but only intros or gfx/msx - not big things like demos.) So we are in the present... at Lato Ludzikow many "lost" ppl appeared, next year there will be another Forever party,... I can't say 8 bit Atari is dead! Btw, I must tell you one thing. :) I don't know if it was only my impression, but at the first Forever 2e3, while running the "best of" Atari demos, friends who were Commodorists and mainly Spectrists were absolutely impressed/fascinated by Atari demos, I had a feeling that demos as I decribed were never made for C64 or ZX. Yes, they had Doom-like things, plasmas etc, but tunnels, texture cubes,...? I haven't seen anything like that.
Final note: In comparison with C64 or ZX our scene is very, very small. Maybe only Poland and some guys like me or -XI- in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands. And some nostalgic collectors in other parts of the world. We don't even have any serious news server dedicated only to Atari XE/XL! Simply, the best years are away... The C64/ZX scene is organised, it isn't anything special if an Amiga/PC group has its "small" section... we can dream about something like this. :-(
Atari ST/E [16 bit]
Hehe, probably most of you started with this comp. :-) Where to begin? The ST scene was formed hand in hand with the Amiga scene some time in 1987, the Exceptions are the ppl who started it all. I think I don't have to describe what it looked like in these times - big fights between Amiga and ST, vectors, polygons, chip music, killing every cycle of free CPU time to do fullscreen scrollers, 16x16 sprites, plasmas, 4 chnl mod music etc etc... This trend of making demos continues on Atari to the year 1993. Then nearly all the ST scene splits up. Big names like Next, Overlanders, The Exceptions are lost in space. The game market falls down too, this means the end of cracking groups like Replicants or ICS. And the rest has moved to Atari's new child - Falcon 030 (mainly Germans). Really, I can't remember many ST demos from 1994 to 1998, only diskmags like Undercover Magascene and Maggie stay ST compatible, from time to time some ST release... In 1999, at the Error in Line party, comes the revival of the ST Scene - 5 or 6 demos have been released, even Falcon groups like DHS or Mystic Bytes have coded things for ST competition instead of Falcon. Since this year new demos for ST have appeared from time to time, mainly at some party, some smaller things like intros for mags or so. It's interesting that nearly the whole ST scene is the thing of western Europe (France, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Italy,...), probably bcoz of reasons I described in the paragraph above.
Final note: The ST scene is much better organised than the XE/XL one. There are news servers, mags, serious groups,... it's bcoz many groups are doing things for Falcon and ST together (Falcon is compatible with ST since in ST you can find Motorola 68000 and in Falcon 68030) and cleanly written software for ST is practically without problems compatible with Falcon and vice versa.
Falcon 030 [32 bit]
I won't be surprised if you heard about this comp for the first time. Atari developed this comp in 1992, but it came to shops in late '93. As many Atari hw specialist says: this machine has been fantastically invented, well projected and totally stupidly developed. :) Add the lack of Atari Corp and you know now why this computer isn't quite as famous as iMAC in the present... I won't be going into details, simply this should be a computer for multimedia for a fair prize, apart from MC68030 CPU on the mainboard we can find a second CPU, RISC DSP56001, programmable graphics copro VIDEL and FPU MC68882; these chips allow things like 16 bit 50 kHz stereo sound, realtime hdd recording, practically any gfx resolution etc etc. That's only a short overview, for more info check any link below. As you can see, the Falcon scene is maybe the youngest scene from all computers, under 10 years!
When this machine appeared, as I wrote, many ppl moved from ST to Falcon to form the scene. Germany was the leading country, a lot of parties were held during 1993-96, practically at every party 4-5 Falcon demos were released, without ST competitions!!! (That means hicolor gfx and multichannel msx competitions ONLY.) Until 1994 coders coded only "conversions" of ST fx, but then started with "real" fx - bump mappings, tunnels, shaded cubes, they simply invented a new style. The leading groups in the Falcon scene were Avena, Lazer and E.K.O.
And then it happend, as usually... in 1997, I think after the last big Falcon Party, SILIConvention, a situation from 1993 on ST repeated - nearly the whole Falcon scene split up. (I mean mainly German groups like Aura, The Naughty Bytes, Lazer, E.K.O., ...) But there wasn't any long pause like in the case of the ST. In 1998 new faces like the Dead Hackers Society (formely known on ST), Mystic Bytes (build on Shadows' ruins), Cobra (another "big" section of an 8bit group), Escape or Cream appeared. Since 1998 new demos comparable to present PC/Amiga AGA demos appear every year, the most leadings groups are the Swedish DHS, German Escape, Polish Mystic Bytes or (Finnish?) T.O.Y.S.
Final note: it's very difficult to differentiate between Falcon and ST. Serious software developers know only "TOS compatible computers" (TOS = operating system of Atari ST/Falcon), no differences between them. Falcon coders are the most active Atarians, it's much much easier to code something on Falcon than on ST (bcoz of bitplane gfx, Falcon has something like famous PC's 320x200x256 - chunky oriented screen).
Other systems
Not very much to say... Portfolio and PC compatible ones are only for collectors, no motivation to code for these comps. But for Lynx and Jaguar there are still ppl who develop new games (!) and even some demos. Usually via emulator and then they "burn" them into cartridge (Lynx) or via an interface connected to Atari ST or PC (Jaguar).
Scene life
Here I give you some overview about some scene oriented things...
-=: Parties :=-
Lato Ludzikow/Last Party [Opalenica/Poland] - LP is organised every winter since 1997, LL suply missing summer parties for 8 bit (Intel Outside, QuaST) since 1999
Forever 2e3 [Trencin/Slovakia] has tradition since 2000, for all 8 bit machines, biggest 8 bit party in Central Europe
Error In Line [Dresden/Germany] - tradition since 1999, every two years, ST/Falcon oriented
Unconventional Party [Legensfeld/Germany] - tradition since 2000 (iirc), all Ataris, every autumn
They are ofcoz main parties... mainly for ST/Falcon there are a lot of parties, but the ones above are the most famous.
-=: Mags :=-
Serious, Syzygy, NOP (XE/XL) - in Polish language (believe yet the Polish scene is the leading one ? ;-)
Undercover M., Alive! (ST/F030) - Alive! is a new mag after Maggie's end, long history :-)
MyAtari (All Ataris) - web mag, oriented mainly for "serious" topics
-=: Links :=-
http://atariarea.nostalgia.pl (XE/XL) - in fact the only serious source for new software, news etc. The big drawback is the Polish language :-(
http://atari8.prv.pl (XE/XL) - Vasco's homepage (organiser of LP and LL parties), guess what language? :)
http://www.dhs.nu (ST/F030) - main news demo server for ST/F030. Nicely designed, daily updated
http://www.atari.org (mainly ST/F030) - "serious" news server, forums, links ...
http://www.atari-history.com - best historical site about Atari... (Atari.* :-)
OK, we're at the end... Ofcoz this isn't all I can write about Atari, there are a lot of things to say, but it's impossible to do this in one article... The main reason of writing this article was to show ppl that Atari isn't dead, why it isn't like Amiga and how it's possible it's so unknown...
MiKRO
XE/XL/MegaSTE/Falcon
mikro.atari.org